This building has been the home of the National Women's Party since 1929. This historic structure is also the home of the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument which preserves and shared the histories of women who dedicated their lives to the promotion and advancement of equal rights for women. Permanent exhibit galleries, the first feminist library, and hundreds of artifacts are on display in addition to special programs and events throughout the year. The monument is named after women's suffrage leaders Alva Belmont and Alice Paul, and visitors can explore the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument free of charge thanks to the National Park Service and others who helped to make this building a national monument in 2016.
The Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 was a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913, organized by the suffragist Alice Paul for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The march was scheduled on the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration to "march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded", as the official program stated. The parade included ten bands, five mounted brigades, 26 floats, and around 8000 marchers, including many notables such as Helen Keller, who was scheduled to speak at Constitution Hall after the march. After a non-eventful beginning to the march, the marchers encountered crowds, mostly male, who jeered and harassed the women. Over 200 women were treated for injuries at local hospitals. The violent actions of the mob discredited the arguments of anti-suffragists who in the past had claimed that they were concerned about the physical welfare of women who might be injured when they tried to cast votes.
The Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum is located in the building where Clara Barton, nurse and founder of the Red Cross, lived during and after the Civil War. From 1865 to 1868, Barton operated an office at this property to handle correspondence concerning soldiers who went missing during the Civil War. In 1996, Richard Lyons of the General Services Administration rediscovered the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office when the building was slated for demolition. The General Services Administration, which owned the building, partnered with the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in 2007 to save this unique historic site. The Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum opened in 2015, giving the public access to preserved rooms and exhibits.
The National Council of Negro Women was established in 1935 by Mary McLeod Bethune. From its headquarters in Washington, DC, the NCNW works with local organizations to provide opportunities and improve conditions for women of African descent in the United States and throughout the world. Bethune and other women established the NCNW as a coordinating body to empower Black women in their communities, defend the civil and political rights of Black women, and provide educational opportunities for members of Black communities. The organization currently reaches close to four million women and welcomes visitors to its national headquarters.
The Women's March on Washington took place on January 21, 2017, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States. It was the largest single day of protest in American history. What started as a Facebook post quickly spread to other social media sites and gained its footing as an organized, grassroots event. The Women's March aimed to raise awareness of the social, cultural, and political issues facing women today. While approximately half a million people attended the protest in Washington, between 3.3 and 5.2 million people participated in sister marches across the United States and thousands more participated in sister marches around the world. This location marks where a stage for speakers and performers was set up.
Opened in 2004, the World War II Memorial honors the 16 million who served in the United States Armed Forces, the more than 400,000 members who made the ultimate sacrifice, and the millions who supported war efforts on the home front. This is the only memorial related to an event in the 20th century that appears in the central axis of the National Mall. It is part of the National Park Service's National Mall and Memorial Parks.
Built in 1931, the District of Columbia War Memorial honors the 26,000 residents of D.C. who served in World War I. With architecture inspired by ancient Greece and Rome, it was designed as a functional bandstand for commemorative and military concerts that were popular in the early to mid twentieth century. Today, it is part of the National Park Service's National Mall and Memorial Parks, where it has recently undergone restoration. It is the only locally-focused memorial on the National Mall.
This West Potomac Park memorial commemorates the thirty-second President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945). Elected to the presidency four consecutive times (1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944), he served for a total of just over twelve years. During his time in office, Roosevelt enacted the New Deal to combat the effects of the Great Depression and prevent something like it from happening again. Later in his tenure, he shepherded the nation through the Second World War, the deadliest conflict in human history. On April 12, 1945, while vacationing in Warm Springs, Georgia, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of sixty-three. Following his death, Congress established the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Commission in 1955. After nearly two decades of delay, the commission chose landscape architect Lawrence Halprin to design the memorial in 1974. Dedicated on May 2, 1997 by President Bill Clinton, it consists of five loosely-defined outdoor areas, four of which focus on Roosevelt’s four terms in office. Constructed of over four and a half tons of South Dakota red granite and utilizing 100,000 gallons of water, the memorial features several bronze sculptures and reliefs designed by various artists, in addition to a large waterfall, reflecting pool, and numerous quotations etched into the granite walls. After the National Organization on Disability criticized the memorial for not adequately addressing Roosevelt’s disability, a bronze sculpture of the president in his wheelchair was added in 2001.
On April 9, 1939, African American contralto singer Marian Anderson performed a free concert outside the Lincoln Memorial for an audience of 75,000. The concert was organized after Anderson refused to perform in front of a segregated audience at Constitution Hall, the headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial was a powerful civil rights demonstration. Though Anderson had never performed in front of such an enormous crowd and admitted she was frightened, she later wrote, "I could not run away from this situation. If I had anything to offer, I would have to do so now."
The Vietnam Women’s Memorial honors the 265,000 women who served in the American military in the Vietnam era, 10,000 to 11,000 of whom actively served in the Vietnam War. Dedicated in 1993, this is the first memorial in the nation’s capital specifically dedicated to women’s service in the Armed Forced. The sculpture, created by artist Glenna Goodacre, depicts three women caring for a male soldier. The memorial is located within walking distance of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and the Lincoln Memorial.
The Daughters of the American Revolution is a women's service organization dedicated to promoting historic preservation, education, patriotism, and honoring the patriots of the Revolutionary War. Their headquarters and museum are located in the within walking distance of President's Park and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The museum, located in the 1904 Memorial Continental Hall, is dedicated to preserving the history, art, and artifacts of pre-industrial America. Established in 1890, the museum has 33 American period rooms with a collection expanding more than 30,000 items, including coverlets, furniture, costumes, ceramics, miniatures, toys, dolls, silver, glass, and musical instruments used or made in America in the preindustrial period (1700 to 1850).
Declared a National Historical Landmark in 1965, the headquarters of the National Red Cross houses a small number of exhibits related to the history of the organization, as well as artifacts and works of art. The Red Cross was founded in the United States by Clara Barton and a circle of her acquaintances in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 1881.
The Silent Sentinels were members of the National Woman's Party advocating for women's suffrage. They picketed outside the White House for six days a week from January 10, 1917 to June 4, 1919, the day the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in Congress. They received the nickname "Silent Sentinels" for choosing to remain silent while picketing, the words on their banners and their stoic nature making the most powerful statements. They were subjected to harassment and violence while picketing and were later arrested and jailed. President Woodrow Wilson released them from jail and publicly supported women's suffrage for the first time in 1918. Their work help lead to the passing and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and contributes to a larger history of women's rights in the United States.
The National Museum of Women in Arts (NMWA) is dedicated to showcasing female artists in a variety of mediums. Founded in 1987 by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, an art collector and patron, with her husband Wallace, the NMWA is the only major museum exclusively focused on women in the arts. The museum focuses on featuring influential artists from the past as well as the best female artists of the present-day. The extensive 4,500-piece collection includes art ranging from the 16th century to the present-day.
The Mary McLeod Bethune Council House was the private residence of civil rights leader, educator, and stateswoman Mary McLeod Bethune, who lived at the house from 1943 to 1949. The house also served as the first headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women from 1943 to 1966. The house is overseen by the National Park Service as part of the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site and is located within the Logan Circle Historic District.
Although women were never officially employed as nurses during the American Civil War, roughly 4,000 worked as volunteers on both sides--both Union and Confederate. Of this number, nearly one-fifth were Catholic nuns who took on the role of battlefield nurse. The Nuns of the Battlefield memorial in Washington D.C. was constructed in 1924 to honor the role of these women in caring for the wounded of America's bloodiest conflict at a time when medicine was often brutal, misinformed, and unsanitary. Conceived and executed by Irish sculptor Jerome Connor, the monument is significant for being only one of two in the area to honor women for their roles in battle.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary lived in this brick home from 1881 to 1885 while she attended Howard University, an all-Black college in Washington D.C. She was a writer, educator, lawyer, abolitionist, and also the first Black woman to write for a newspaper in North America. She promoted equality for all people and she expressed her feelings in newspaper articles that circulated around Canada and the United States. Her house was designated a National Historic Landmark due to its association with Cary, who left a significant impression on American history as an outspoken advocate for justice, equality, and education.
Located in Meridian Hill Park, the bronze equestrian statue commemorates French national heroine and Catholic saint, Joan of Arc (c.1412-1431). Born to a peasant family in northeastern France during the Hundred Years’ War, she began hearing divine voices and having visions of saints at the age of thirteen. They ordered her to drive the English out of France and see to it that the dauphin (Charles of Valois, the eldest son of deceased French king Charles VI) be crowned king of France. In May 1429, despite having no military training, she led an army that broke the siege at Orléans. Over the course of the subsequent two months, she escorted the dauphin through enemy-held territory to Reims, where he was crowned king of France in July. Captured by pro-English forces at Compiègne, she was tried, convicted of heresy, and burned at the stake in Rouen in May 1431. Nearly five hundred years later, in 1920, Pope Benedict XV made her a saint. Dedicated in 1922, the statue, which measures ten feet in length and nine feet in height, is an exact replica of the one designed by sculptor Paul Dubois in the late nineteenth century that stands in front of the Reims Cathedral. Given by ‘Le Lyceum Société des Femmes de France à New York’ as a gift to the women of America, it is the only equestrian statue of a woman in the nation’s capital.
Since its purchase in 1955 by the businesswoman, socialite, philanthropist and collector Marjorie Merriweather Post, Hillwood has served to function once as a place of residence, and forever as a museum to educate and awe those who visited it. Hillwood is known largely for its sizeable decorative arts collection that focuses heavily on the House of Romanov, a collection of French decorative art, and acres of sculpted gardens. Included in the collection are, among other pieces, Fabergé eggs, 18th and 19th century French art, and one of the country's finest orchid collections. Hillwood's mansion and gardens opened to the public in 1977 and are maintained by the Post Foundation.
This Tour is a Walking Tour.
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This tour highlights places and events throughout Washington, D.C. related to women's history. Explore museums, historic sites, and monuments founded by or dedicated to women and discover important moments in women's history within the city.
